Monday, April 18, 2011

30 Day Horror Challenge: Day 26

Most likely because my family had cable starting in 1979, I was fed a steady diet of horror films from HBO, Cinemax and Showtime. This was a time where almost any movie could pop up on any of the movie stations, no matter what the time of day was or what the content of the film was. I would watch mostly R rated comedies and horror films. I can even remember a time where each of the three movie channels scheduled the same movie at the same time. I would flip the channels and re-watch the few lines of dialogue I had just seen on another station. This was before movie channels got exclusives. It was a much simpler time.

Your favorite horror film to watch as a child.

Terror Train (1980)

One of the movies that I kept watching, as a child, was Terror Train. It starred Jamie Lee Curtis and magician David Copperfield. It's an odd casting, but it works for the film.

The story starts off with a fraternity prank gone wrong. A girl is talking into luring a pre-med student into a darkened room for a fun night, but instead of the girl, the student ends up in bed with a corpse. The student is traumatized and is sent to a psychiatric hospital. Flash forward three years and the graduating students throw a costume party on a train, but there's an unexpected guest.

A unique feature of this film is that most of the kills happen off screen. There is very little gore, but it does enhance the scares. The killer dons the costume of the latest kill, in order to blend in with the other guests on the train.

One thing has bothered me between my original viewings and watching the DVD. There seems to be a scene missing where there was a compartment splattered in blood from a killing that was discovered. Eventually the blood is revealed to be red paint. The red paint scene is not on the DVD but was memorable enough that my parents remember watching it with me back then.